TIJUANA  Deported to Tijuana after two decades in California, Nancy Landa found an apartment, landed a job at a maquiladora and earned a promotion to a management position. But the graduate from California State University Northridge wanted more: the chance to pursue her dream of a public-service career.

Landa is part of a generation of young deportees struggling to build identities and carve out paths in a country they left as children, where they have few memories and tenuous ties. The journey for many has meant learning to live by new rules, navigate unfamiliar bureaucracies and overcome negative sterotypes.

“People are seeing us as a problem, we’re stigmatized, we’re the deportees,” said Landa, who was brought to the United States at 9 and deported at 29. “How can we be an asset for Mexico?”

About 500,000 Mexicans between the ages of 18 and 35 living in the United States without authorization returned to Mexico between 2005 and 2010, said Jill Anderson, a postdoctoral fellow with the Center for North American Studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Many of them are “bilingual, bicultural people who went to high school and really identify as an American,” Anderson said.

Together with photographer Nin Solis, she has made them the subject of an upcoming book, “Los Otros Dreamers” — which means “The Other Dreamers.” The name is inspired by the DREAMers movement of young unauthorized immigrants seeking legal status in the United States.

Anderson divides “Los Otros Dreamers” into three broad categories:

•unauthorized immigrants who voluntarily returned to Mexico after finding few opportunities in the United States

•those like Nancy, who might have qualified to remain in the U.S. if certain immigration changes were adopted before their deportation

•people convicted of felonies in the U.S. and were automatically repatriated to Mexico after being released from prison.

Back in Mexico, even educated and highly motivated deportees often face assimilation hurdles — from government red tape to social attitudes, Anderson said. Just obtaining Mexican identification documents, a prerequisite for employment, can be daunting for individuals with no ties to their birthplace.

“There are so many of us, and we’re not visible. Institutions are not responsive to our issues,” Landa said during a recent interview at her family’s small apartment in Tijuana’s Colonia Juárez.

Even when she lived in California, Landa knew she wanted to attend graduate school. After being deported to Mexico, she decided to continue pursuing that ambition.

Administrators at public and private universities in Tijuana informed her that she would have to go through “revalidación de estudios” — a formal review of her U.S. coursework by governmental education authorities. The process involves submitting a birth certificate, transcripts and course descriptions, with official translations and certifications.

“That’s the regulation right now,” said Fernando León García, president of the private CETYS University, whose students enrolled at campuses in Mexicali, Tijuana and Ensenada include 316 U.S. high school graduates and 23 with U.S. bachelor’s degrees. The university’s staff members help students navigate the government’s re-validation requirements, and assuming a person has all the documentation, “typically the process takes 30 to 50 days,” León said.